Breaker’s End is about a couple, Isaac and Chloe, who dropped out of society decades ago. After years on the road, they settled in a wood called Breaker’s End, living a subsistence lifestyle selling decorated shells in a nearby seaside town. However, their lives are about to be turned upside down, as the land they’re squatting on is being sold to a developer. They have little option but to move on, but while Chloe is hankering for a better life, Isaac is preparing to fight for his home to the bitter end.
The book ends up being about decisions: how the choices we make at any given point can be pivotal enough to change the rest of our lives, even if they seem trivial in the spur of the moment; and whether it’s ever too late to make a u-turn and change your life completely.
Corban Wilkin’s illustration is charming. Isaac’s proud Gallic nose lifts as he moves, oozing pride and depth of character. Chloe is meeker, prone to curling up, mouse-like, protecting herself from her past and her future. The characterisation is superb – these feel like living, breathing people, enduring the back end of a hippy lifestyle that, with the onset of middle-age, isn’t the exciting adventure it seemed to be when they were in their twenties.
With an ending that comes as something of a surprise, Breaker’s End is a thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable book, that will continue live with you long after you’ve closed its pages.
